Water

When we use powerful 21st-century approaches worthy of water’s essential role in our lives and communities, we’ll have clean and plentiful water today and tomorrow.

New ideas, technologies, and ready-to-go solutions can provide us with safe water coming from every tap, farms that grow food without polluting waterways, cities strengthened by cleaner lakes and rivers, and enough water for people and nature. “Smart Water” management, a new integrated approach that values all water, can accelerate and deliver these results by embracing each step needed to protect water for people and nature.

How We Do It

More than ever, all water is valuable and solutions are at hand to protect it. Our strategies include supporting:

Implementing Smart Water Management in Cities

We support local efforts in cities from coast-to-coast to implement Smart Water approaches, like green infrastructureLooking for more information? You can dive deeper with these resources:

— American Rivers Integrated Water Management1, that can reduce water pollution, add parks and other amenities, reduce flooding, and augment water supply. We fund leaders who are bringing this new thinking and bold practice to the urgent task of ensuring safe, sufficient, and secure water, creating more resilient communities, healthier waters, and stronger economies.

Boosting Smart Water Management on the Farm

We support efforts to work with farmers and large-scale buyers of agricultural products to encourage sustainable water use, reduce pollution, and increase farm revenue. With a current focus in the Midwest, where most commodity crops are grown, we make grants to projects that boost demand for sustainably-grown products and advance practicesLooking for more information? You can dive deeper with these resources:

We support implementation of policies that stimulate investment in Smart Water approaches or facilitate their implementation. We fund efforts locally and nationally to reduce barriers to new policies that ensure clean, reliable water is available for all.Looking for more information? You can dive deeper with these resources:

We fund the use and development of technology, including remote sensing, low-cost water quality monitors, open source applications, and web-based platforms, to increase the protection of water. We invest in technologies that allow the public to document water pollution and advocate for clean-up.

Increasing Peer-to-Peer Sharing

We support information sharing efforts in and between urban watersheds that are already scaling up new water management practices or thinking about doing so. Connecting stakeholders so they can share information is among the most effective means of scaling Smart Water practices from city to city across our nation.

Looking for more information? You can dive deeper with these resources:

Implementing Smart Water solutions creates impressive results for people and nature, reducing the strains brought on by climate change, population growth, failing infrastructure, and pollution.

Grantee Spotlight

Environmental Working Group

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) uses research, education, communication, and advocacy to help people make more informed choices, and to push the government toward healthier policies. They’ve recently launched an initiative to protect drinking water from farm pollution, creating healthier conditions for millions of people.

Highlights of EWG’s projects thus far include their work to:

Assemble water testing data from over 50,000 utilities to create a national Tap Water Database that people can use to learn about contaminants in their drinking water and learn what they can do to protect themselves.

Launch a Farming and Tap Water resource that includes reports, maps, infographics, and action alerts to build pressure for better policies and programs to protect source water.

Build a team of experts in remote sensing to reveal what measures farmers are taking to cut pollution from their fields.

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